Fred Myers, Chair

Professor of Anthropology
B.A. 1970, Amherst; M.A. 1972, Ph.D. 1976, Bryn Mawr.

Research interests:
Fred Myers does research with Aboriginal people in Australia,
concentrating on Western Desert people. He is interested in
exchange theory and material culture, the intercultural
production and circulation of culture, in contemporary art
worlds, in identity and personhood, and in how these are
related to theories of value and practices of signification.

These interests are developed in two recent books, an edited
volume, The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material
Culture (Santa Fe: SAR Press, 2001), and a study of the
development and circulation of Aboriginal acrylic painting, Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal Fine Art (Duke University Press, 2002)

For a complete list of publications, please click here.

Publications
Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Durham: Duke University Press. 2002

The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture. Edited volume. Santa Fe: SAR Press. 2001

" Aesthetics and Practice: A Local Art History of Pintupi Painting." In H. Morphy and M. Boles, eds. The Art of Place: Dialogues with the Kluge-Ruhe Collection of Australian Aboriginal Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press. and G. Marcus, eds. 1999

The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Anthropology and Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1995

"Locating Ethnographic Practice: Romance, Reality, and Politics in the Outback." American Ethnologist, 15: 609-24. 1988

"Burning the Truck and Holding the Country: Forms of Property, Time, and the Negotiation of Identity among Pintupi Aborigines." In T. Ingold, D. Riches, and J. Woodburn (eds), Hunter- Gatherers, II: Property, Power and Ideology. London: Berg Publishing. (longer version [In] E. Wilmsen, ed., We Are Here. Berkeley: University of California Press.) 1988

Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines. Smithsonian Institution Press, Wash., D.C. (reprinted in paperback by University of California Press, 1991) 1986